


Third Wheel Rolling

by Ignaz Wisdom (ignaz)



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Multi, OT3, Threesome, m/m/f
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-05-12
Updated: 2008-05-12
Packaged: 2017-10-02 00:08:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignaz/pseuds/Ignaz%20Wisdom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>He's not jealous, but he's been the third wheel for so long that it's hard to tell the difference.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Third Wheel Rolling

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place after (and contains spoilers through) the season three finale. This has been thoroughly Jossed by season four, but I like it anyway, and I hope you will, too. Huge thanks to Zulu and Nos for their stellar betas, to my friends list for keeping my head above water when I lost the first version of this, and to Hooverphonic for getting me through the rewrite. :)

Two days after Eric Foreman turns his back on Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, on Greg House and all his bullshit, never to look back, Cameron calls.

He's at home when his cell phone, set to vibrate, buzzes between a pair of cardboard boxes on the living room coffee table. He's packing up his apartment, taking down the picture frames and putting away the expensive baubles that never made the place feel like home. He hasn't accepted any job offers yet, but they've been coming in and he's not concerned. He has his pick of the litter and he's in no hurry.

When he sees Cameron's name pop up, he almost doesn't answer--but that would be cold, rude, uncivil. That would be too much like House.

_Eric Foreman, today is the first day of the rest of your life._

He flips open the phone.

She's calling to tell him that she quit, and before he can recover from that news, she asks him if he wants to join her and Chase for drinks in a few hours, one last hurrah before they part ways for good. He wants to say no--of course he wants to say no. But he says yes instead, because it's the polite thing to do, it's the right thing to do, he _does_ like Cameron, and as for Chase--well, there are worse things in the world than Chase. Anyway, Chase just got _fired_, and the right thing to do by the guy is be sympathetic and buy him a drink or two.

Hell, maybe Foreman will even enjoy it. After all, he's probably never going to see either of them ever again.

Four hours later the three of them are sitting in a bar near campus, half a dozen empty glasses of various shapes and sizes on the table in front of them. Cameron's stirring something red and fruity and watching Foreman with blurry sympathy as he drowns his sorrows, and maybe a few other people's sorrows, too, just for the hell of it.

They've spent the last hour talking, commiserating, even reminiscing--about old patients, old colleagues and coworkers, House, anything that came to mind. These are things Foreman doesn't talk about, not with anyone, because there's nobody for him to talk to--and even if there was, nobody would believe half the stories he has to tell about the last three years. His father is unreachable and his mother wouldn't remember; he hasn't talked to his brother in years and since Wendy, there hasn't been anyone else in his life except ... Chase and Cameron.

“I hated it,” Foreman says, in wonder and despair, “but it was the best job I ever had. I just left the best job I ever had.”

“You can't think like that,” Cameron says. It sounds less like comfort than a direct order, almost as if she's channeling Cuddy, and maybe he's not the only one who should have been worried about turning into his employer. “You're a great doctor. There are going to be better jobs out there. There are definitely going to be better bosses.”

“I didn't even get a decent reference out of it,” Foreman says. He doesn't mean it to come out so forlorn but his tone misses its mark and Chase starts laughing at him. It's strangely infectious. Foreman finds himself smiling a little, ruefully, realizing how he must sound.

“Forget about House,” Cameron says. “Fuck him.” She looks surprised at herself and makes a face, which only makes Chase laugh more. Foreman grins. _Atta-girl_, he thinks, surprising himself.

“This could be the best thing that's ever happened to us,” Chase says a moment later.

“Hear, hear,” Cameron says. She smiles, bumps her shoulder against Chase's, and raises her mostly empty glass before taking a long drink from it.

Foreman raises his own glass--one more he probably shouldn't have ordered--and joins the toast. Then he puts the drink down and looks across the table at Chase and Cameron, their faces flushed and happy. Not for the first time he wonders whether House assembles his teams based on how attractive they look. It's the sort of thing the old bastard would do. They're ridiculously beautiful people, Chase and Cameron, physically perfect as far as he can tell, and both brilliant doctors on top of that.

Someday, a drunken part of Foreman's brain thinks, they're going to have beautiful children.

In the meantime, they're here with him at the bar, helping him cope with the loss of the weirdest and worst and somehow still best job he's ever had and ever will have. That any of them will have. They're good people--his friends. He's going to miss them. He misses them already.

He's tanked. He doesn't know when it happened, which drink put him over the edge, but he's clearly plastered. He'd have to be, to be thinking of Cameron and Chase like this. He shakes his head and the table under him spins a little, so he stops shaking and stares at the first fixed point on which his eyes land, which happens to be the collar of Chase's sweater. Chase always wears the ugliest, most mismatched clothes, and this sweater is no different: a green and orange mess of argyle whose only credit is that it fits Chase well. Foreman stares at the pattern and tries not to get sick. He shifts his gaze upward an inch and focuses on the hollow of Chase's throat instead, then up at the faint shadow of blond stubble darkening Chase's neck and jaw.

“Are you all right?” Chase asks as if from far away. Foreman has never admitted it but he's always sort of liked Chase's accent, the lilt in his voice both goofy and somehow melodic.

“Under the circumstances,” Foreman answers, proud of himself for not slurring his words, “I'd say I'm pretty great.”

Cameron laughs and groans at the same time. “Poor Foreman,” she says, and then stands up, wobbling only a little. “We should get out of here before this gets any worse.”

Foreman tries to agree, but then Cameron is pulling on his arm and dragging up out of his chair, so that takes up most of his ability to focus for the next few seconds. “I'm fine,” he tells her, gently shaking off the assistance. She shrugs with a smile on her face, and they clumsily even up their bill before leaving. Cameron walks out first and he watches her from behind with amusement. She's a graceful drunk, dancing more than staggering out the door, a buzzed ballerina with delicate, unpredictable feet. Chase follows Foreman; when Cameron stops for a moment to navigate around a table, Chase runs straight into Foreman's back, pressing flush against him before jumping away with a mumbled apology.

They both follow Cameron outside, chivalrously staying close to her in case she trips. It's late and it's a workday, so the crowds have mostly thinned out, leaving the three of them more or less to themselves. Foreman reaches out to put a hand on Cameron's elbow as she steps over a rain puddle.

“Foreman,” she says, laughing, and then she stumbles, or maybe he stumbles, and suddenly they're standing very close to each other. He can smell the artificial apple of her shampoo, and under it her perfume, which he can't identify. She's gripping his arm to stay upright, and he looks down at her and thinks, not for the first time, that she is very, very pretty. He's startled by the next thought, which is that she's not nearly as young as he remembered her being. In his mind, she's still that girl, barely a woman yet, who he met on his first day at Princeton-Plainsboro, the one who earnestly introduced herself as _Allison_ and who he first mistook for some kind of intern or even a med student. But Cameron isn't that girl-child anymore. The last three years have transformed her, just as they have him.

Just as they have Chase. Foreman suddenly remembers the other member of their party and he peels his eyes away from Cameron long enough to spot Chase, the third point of their strange triangle, looking disheveled but alert. His shirt is half untucked and his hands are shoved deep into his pockets; through the locks of hair obscuring his face, Foreman can see that his eyes are somehow both dark and bright.

Cameron follows Foreman's gaze, twisting around and releasing her grip on his arm. She stares at Chase and then back at Foreman. There is silence between them.

“We're probably never going to see you again,” Cameron offers as an ice breaker, her face sad and sweet.

 

A street lamp reflects off the shiny blond mop of Chase's hair and Foreman is momentarily dazzled by the glare.

“What are we going to do without you?” Chase murmurs.

Foreman is drunk. That's the only possible explanation for where his mind goes with that statement. What are they going to do without him, indeed. They've been doing a lot without him lately; neither of them has said a word but it's all too obvious that they're fucking again. It's not that he's jealous, or even all that interested, but they've worked long hours in close quarters, the three of them, for a hell of a long time: sustaining each other with coffee (Foreman could never operate the machine right, Chase always made it too strong, and Cameron constantly surprised them with her experimental exotic blends that tasted like shit half the time), catching each other asleep (Foreman on a bench in the locker room, Chase in the NICU lounge, and Cameron in a corner chair, where she'd wake up with cricks her neck every time), having nobody else in the world but each other to listen and understand when it came to complaints about the boss. Foreman figures that at this point, after three years of this detail, he knows both of them about as well as anybody does, and they probably know him better than anyone else. Personal habits, tastes, quirks, faults ... everything except this thing that Chase and Cameron keep for only each other. He's not jealous, but he's been the third wheel for so long that it's hard to tell the difference.

What they're going to do without him, then, is just what they've been doing already for months: they're going to go back to Cameron's tasteful but under-decorated apartment or Chase's place with its mismatched, frat-house furniture, and screw. Cameron wants it tonight, Foreman can see it in her eyes, and he wonders what that night with Kalvin Ryan's drugs had really been like. What she looked like. Whether she had that same hunger in her eyes, and how long Chase managed to hold back and resist. What he looked like when he gave in. Whether it was anything like the way he looks right now.

Foreman must be drunker than he realized, because he suddenly finds himself laughing, tossing his head back into the light of the street lamp and chuckling at the absurdity of the situation. When he looks back, Cameron and Chase are both smiling, the former demurely, and latter nervously. Silence falls on them again.

This time it's Chase who makes the overture.

“I can make coffee,” he says neutrally.

_I've tasted your coffee, and no, you can't_, Foreman thinks, and he almost laughs again before recognition grabs him. Damn. He's never been in quite this situation before but he's been on enough dates to understand the intent behind the ambiguity of that statement.

He turns to Cameron, who stares back at him with a expression he can't quite read. Trepidation, expectation--lust? She licks her lower lip and averts her eyes.

“Yeah,” Foreman says, as calmly as he can, and then he reaches out to hail a taxi.

They don't speak during the ride to Chase's apartment. Foreman sits shotgun so the two of them can have the back. It's silent and awkward, but at least he's not pressed up against one or both of them, feeling the heat of their bodies through their clothes, close enough to smell them. He cracks the window and takes a deep breath of the cool evening air that rushes in. It does nothing to clear his head.

Foreman pays the cab, waving Chase away as he offers his wallet, and then they go inside and up the stairs to Chase's apartment.

Cameron approaches first when they're inside with the door closed, carefully, giving him time to change his mind and reject her. He can't help feeling lost and a little ambushed, even though he wants this, wants her, wants them both--like it would even be possible to separate them now. As if she can sense his trepidation, her first touch is gentle, almost maternal, as she guides him to the bedroom, Chase following silently.

Chase's sleeping quarters don't have quite the thrift store/college dorm vibe as the rest of his apartment, the parts Foreman has already seen. He wonders if any of that is Cameron's feminine influence, whether she has fussed and puttered around in Chase's bedroom the way she had in their office with holiday decorations, cheerfully colored mugs, and soothing computer desktop backgrounds, adding her domesticating touch first to House's and later to Chase's shabby chaos.

He doesn't want to be House, but Chase and Cameron are both in love with House in one way or another, so maybe he can put aside his misgivings, just for now.

At the foot of the neatly made bed, he walks into Cameron's arms and her mouth opens for him.

Her lips are soft and warm; when he slides the tip of his tongue between them, she tastes like strawberry daiquiri, heavy on the sweetness and light on the liquor. She wraps her arms around him, one hand idly massaging the back of his neck, and he presses her close to him, breathing in her scent. She's so tiny, like a doll; he's afraid to push her too hard, as if she might break under his hands.

Their first kiss ends naturally as they both pull apart for air, and Cameron looks away--towards Chase, who steps out of the shadows, his eyes slightly dilated and breathing rapidly. He puts a hand on Cameron's shoulder, looks at her, and then looks at Foreman. Foreman doesn't know what he expects to see in Chase's expression. He finds envy, but he finds more than that; Chase is looking at Foreman with unapologetic desire. It's like looking into a mirror. Foreman glances back at Cameron, searching for--validation, maybe. Approval. She's watching both of them, cautiously, a little bit apprehensively.

Then Chase hooks an arm around Foreman's shoulders, tugs him forward, and kisses him.

The first thing Foreman notices is just how much larger Chase's mouth is than Cameron's. Chase completely dwarfs her. His lips taste different, too, bitter like the dark ale he was drinking at the bar. But like Cameron, his role as an active player ends when his lips meet Foreman's; from there he's content to kiss chastely, with closed mouths, like children, until Foreman is ready to make the next move by kissing back.

He could still back out. He could pull away now, apologize, call a cab on his cell phone and go home to jerk off and nurse his impending hangover. It wouldn't matter--it's not like he's ever going to see the two of them again, at least not for a good long time.

Of course, that's why he came here in the first place, isn't it?

He presses his mouth hard against Chase's and licks his way inside.

He figures out right away that Chase is a good kisser, a great kisser, and why not--the guy tries to be a player; he's probably had a lot of practice. The kisses are dirty, wet, obscene; Chase sucks Foreman's tongue and it feels like he's sucking Foreman's cock at the same time. Foreman wonders if Chase is any good at that.

Things get blurry, maybe because of the kiss, maybe because the effects of Foreman's binge are still revealing themselves long after he's stopped drinking. He feels Cameron behind him, her slim arms wrapped around him, working the buttons on his shirt, and a moment later he's sliding his arms through the sleeves and being guided to the bed where he sits down heavily and then flops onto his back.

From his vantage point on the bed, he watches as Cameron slips out of her shirt and lets it fall to the floor. He unfastens the buttons on his pants as her slim fingers work the clasp at the front of her bra, and then she slips out of that, too, baring her breasts, small and round, her nipples hard. Hard for him. For both of them. Chase comes up from behind her, shirtless himself now, one hand cupping a breast and the other slipping under the waistband of her pants. She's so short that he has to slump a little to reach.

She turns her head and cranes her neck so Chase can kiss her. Foreman watches from the bed, hand tucked into the front of his own slacks, as Chase flicks his thumb against Cameron's nipple and she arches her back in response. Then Chase pulls his hands away and she finishes undressing, letting her pants and underwear fall to the floor in a heap.

Foreman sits up slightly as she approaches the bed to get a better look at her. Pale, with a flush of arousal in her face; firm, high breasts; slim hips, slender legs, neatly trimmed pubes. He wants to bury his face between her thighs. She's thinner than most of the women he's been with, maybe thinner than she should be, and he thinks again about how hard the last three years have been on all of them, how his transmogrification into a ruthless bastard is not the only effect of House's reign.

Then Cameron climbs onto the bed and over him and he puts House far, far out of his mind.

She straddles his thighs and leans down to kiss him. He puts his hands on her, all over her body, explorative at first and then with deliberate intent. He cups her breasts, rolls her nipples between his fingers, feels her push forward into his grasp. When he reaches her hips he finds another already there: Chase, anchoring her with one hand while the other dips between her legs. For a moment his fingers tangle with Chase's, and he doesn't know whether to yield or hold his ground, but then Chase murmurs "Touch her" and his hands disappear.

Cameron moves forward, up the length of Foreman's body, and dips to press her mouth to his again. Her hair falls around his face and he inhales deeply, breathing in the apple-sweet scent as he kisses her back. Someone--Chase, he guesses, because Cameron's arms aren't that long--is stripping him of his pants and underwear. He sighs in relief when his cock is finally freed, and moans when he's suddenly enclosed in a hot, wet mouth. Yes, Chase sucks cock as well as he kisses--better, even.

Foreman puts his hands on Cameron's hips, urging her to move, pulling her until she's straddling his chest and further still. He doesn't look up to see if she understands, but she's pliant and obliging and he maneuvers her until she's looming over him, spread-eagled, damp curls just out of reach of his tongue. She lowers herself just enough so that he can taste her, and he holds onto her trembling thighs while he buries his nose and mouth in her warmth.

_Fuck_, it's good. She quivers and shakes around him as he laps at the folds of her labia and worries her hard little clit. He eats her blindly, mindlessly, while Chase sucks him, making him rock upwards into the searing heat of Chase's mouth. When he's close to coming, he focuses his attention on Cameron, distracting himself just enough to take the edge off.

Cameron's open hands slap the wall behind his head as she struggles to balance and keep herself upright. She's gone, completely out of her head, and her body doesn't know whether it wants to surge forward against Foreman's tongue or squirm away shyly. He holds her as still as he can, bites the pale insides of her thighs, and works her clit again and again until she freezes like a rope pulled taut and then goes limp, practically falling on his face.

He shifts her until she's lying next to him on the bed. Chase never stops what he's doing, taking Foreman in deep, sucking him hard. Beside him he hears Cameron murmuring her approval. She's propped up on one elbow, a pink flush on her cheeks, watching them through heavy eyelids. Chase's blond head moves steadily and Foreman, his hands now free, risks putting them on Chase's warm shoulders. His cock slides smoothly in and out of Chase's mouth; he closes his eyes, feeling the tension pooling in his groin, waiting to explode. Then Chase flicks his tongue over the head of Foreman's cock and Foreman is groaning and coming, spurting into Chase's mouth, squeezing his shoulders as the spasms rock through his body.

He half-dozes, floating on a haze of alcohol and post-orgasmic bliss. The bedroom ceiling above him seems to wobble; the bed shifts under him as Chase moves over. Out of the corner of his eye Foreman sees Chase and Cameron tangled together next to him, a blur of pale flesh: Cameron's legs around Chase's, the two of them rocking against each other, skin to skin. Cameron's fingers scrape down Chase's back and dig into the soft flesh of his ass. Chase cups her small breast in his hand and teases a nipple between his thumb and forefinger, making Cameron gasp.

Foreman can't decide which one of them he wants to fuck.

He thought he was well and truly spent, but watching them undulate against each other, his cock twitches with renewed interest. He takes in the show, eventually letting his hand slide down his body to cup his dick as it swells and hardens. He groans, low in his throat, but it's loud enough that Chase notices and looks at him, eyes dilated. Chase's mouth is dark pink, almost red, and his lips are swollen and parted; a few minutes earlier that mouth was wrapped around Foreman's cock, sucking him off. Foreman shudders at the memory.

Chase is touching him, Chase's hand is on his shoulder, drawing him closer. Foreman goes willingly, and the isolation he hadn't even known he'd been feeling dissipates as Chase's mouth closes over his own. He ignores it, pushing his tongue between Chase's lips, fighting back the part of him that wants to make more of this than it really is.

But Cameron's small hand circles the back of his neck and guides him down to her own mouth, to her neck, to her breast, and he remembers everything from the last three years that he's leaving behind. The time when Cameron accused him of stealing her article, and she got so furious at him that he thought--admittedly a bit happily--that she might never speak to him again. The time when he was sure he was dying and he begged her to forgive him, and she refused. The time when Chase kissed the dying nine-year-old and they all made fun of him for it. The time when he and Chase fell asleep side by side on the couch in the lounge and woke up groggy and more than a bit embarrassed. The time when Foreman punched a hole in the wall of the hospital and Cameron had to splint his fingers. Throwing a baseball at a net with Chase. When they all thought House was dying of cancer.

As much as they'd been through together, how could they not be a little bit in love with one another?

Half under him, Cameron writhes and arches her back, gasps, and mutters “stop.” Foreman freezes and releases her nipple with a wet sound, but Chase just slows the movement of his hips and shifts before driving into her again, and it's clear that they've worked this out, the two of them. Cameron sighs and draws Foreman up to her face again, kissing him lazily until Chase groans and goes still over both of them.

Chase sighs and Cameron guides Foreman away from her, and the next thing Foreman knows, he's kissing Chase, surprised again by the contrast: Chase's mouth is so much larger than Cameron's. Their kisses are lazy, drowsy and post-coital, and Foreman is so relaxed that he completely forgets about the earlier resurgence of arousal. He closes his eyes and allows Chase's mouth and Cameron's hands to lull him into darkness.

* * *

He wakes when the light is still pale, streaming in through the closed blinds, and it takes him a moment to realize where he is. Recognition comes in the form of the heavy weight of Chase's hand across his chest, and the lighter weight of Cameron's neck resting on his own forearm.

Foreman closes his eyes again, and the seasick feeling that follows has little to do with his alcohol intake the night before.

After a moment he moves, gently shifting his arm out from under Cameron and placing Chase's hand somewhere safer than his own chest. Wedged between the two of them, there's no way out but down, so he sits up and scoots forward until he reaches the end of the bed. His shorts are wadded up on the floor. He finds his pants a few feet away and grimaces at the wrinkles.

He's fastening the buttons on his shirt when he feels the weight of a pair of heavy blue eyes. Chase is awake, expression impassive, watching Foreman dress.

“I,” Foreman says, and then falls silent. He looks steadily at Chase, refusing to drop his gaze. “I have a lot of stuff left to pack up.”

Chase turns his head to look at Cameron, still sound asleep with her hair covering her face. Without turning back, Chase asks quietly, sounding amused, “Would it be too corny to say that it's been a pleasure working with you?”

Foreman stares, rolls his eyes, grabs his jacket, and is gone.

He calls a cab from his cell phone as he jogs down the stairs, and then waits in the front corridor of the building until the car arrives, shielding himself from the cold.

His apartment feels empty--which, of course, it is. But the emptiness is unfamiliar, not like the usual sensation of coming home early in the morning after a long night away, on a date or pulling a late shift at the hospital. He doesn't think it's just the mostly bare shelves, either, and the boxes full of objects that mean nothing to him.

He starts the coffee maker and goes to change out of his clothes and into something more comfortable, something that hasn't spent the night on Chase's bedroom floor, something that Cameron hadn't slipped off his shoulders. He brushes his teeth, splashes water on his face, and stares at his face in the bathroom mirror. There's a mark on his neck, almost his shoulder, that looks vaguely like the bruise-shape of a mouth. He doesn't remember that happening.

Back in his living room with mug in hand, for lack of anything else to do and unable to even think about sleeping, he resumes packing. Or he tries, at least, but then ten minutes elapse and all he's managed to do is sip the bitter coffee and stare at the box nearest him.

He reaches into it--it's a bunch of books, a few magazines and medical journals. He pulls out the first thing his hands touch. It's the _New England Journal of Medicine_, an issue from April 2006 -- he recognizes it immediately as the issue that featured his article on the girl with two unrelated cancers, in whom they induced hypothermic cardiac arrest. The article he stole from Cameron. He'd been dying once, or close to it, and he'd apologized to her for that. He'd called her Allison then, and asked her to tell him that they were all right.

He opens the journal at random and the page falls to his--their--article. He closes it again, crosses the room, and sets it on the bookshelf from which it came.

In the end, he decides to stay.


End file.
